Brother Wind (23 page)

He wanted to chant, but was afraid the spirits that had carved his tusk would hear and come to him, so instead he held a chant in his throat, like an amulet, to protect the path to his heart. He let its words fill his mind until they pushed the fear down into his belly, where it burned like fire on bone.

Hard Rock paused at the top of the ulaq and called. She Cries answered him, then came to the climbing log and looked up.

“Come in. I have food,” she said, and as Hard Rock climbed down, She Cries pressed close to him and whispered, “My husband is not here.”

Hard Rock nodded. She Cries picked up her baby and handed him to her husband’s daughter. “Go outside,” she said and pushed the girl toward the climbing log. Hard Rock stepped aside, making room for the scowling girl, the whimpering baby.

She Cries pointed to a floor mat near the largest oil lamp and went to the food cache, brought out a section of smoked fish, and laid it on the floor mat in front of Hard Rock.

Hard Rock grunted and broke off a piece of the fish, ate slowly, without speaking. He pointed to a water bladder that hung from the ulaq rafters, and the woman pulled it down for him, waited while he drank, then hung the bladder again.

“You said when I arranged for you to be wife to Wind Chaser that you would help me when I asked.”

She Cries smiled slowly and combed her fingers through the hair at the sides of her head. “Do you want my husband to know?” she asked.

“Why should I care if your husband knows?” Hard Rock asked and broke off another piece of fish.

“He does not share well,” She Cries said. She lowered her eyelids to look at him through her lashes.

Suddenly Hard Rock laughed, spraying fish from his mouth. “I have four wives, woman,” he said. “Do you think I need someone else in my bed?”

She Cries clamped her mouth shut. She drew in a long breath that flared her nostrils and puffed out her chest.

Hard Rock wiped fish from his chin and said, “I need you to talk to Kukutux.”

She Cries turned her head away, and Hard Rock sighed. He took another bite of fish. “It is not an easy thing I ask. That is why I come to you.” He paused, and when She Cries said nothing he continued. “We need oil. Even if we bring in several whales this summer, we need oil now. I do not have to tell you this. The traders have oil. They ask that they be given a woman while they are here. Someone to take care of their ulaq.”

She Cries drew in her breath. “And you will give them Kukutux? Why Kukutux? Why not Long Wood? Why not Blue Hair? They have no husbands.”

“They are old.”

“Why not Round Eyes?”

“She has children to care for.”

“Do they know about Kukutux’s arm?”

“No,” Hard Rock said, “but why worry? She paddles, sews, fishes. What difference does her arm make?”

“There are scars.”

“So, she will keep her suk on.”

“When she shares their beds?”

“Who sees scars in the darkness of a sleeping place? Besides, I have been in her ulaq when she was not wearing a suk. The scars are not terrible.”

She Cries shrugged. “If they do not want her, I will go to them,” she said.

“You will not miss your husband?”

“How different is one husband from another? I can sew, prepare food, and weave baskets. I am careful not to offend the spirits. I am strong and make strong babies. What more does a man need?”

“You already said your husband does not share well,” Hard Rock answered. “And you have children. Kukutux does not.”

“My children can care for themselves, and my husband will share—if he knows he will get oil.”

“Then help me,” Hard Rock said. “The traders have offered two seal bellies of oil for Kukutux. I will give you one.”

For a time She Cries said nothing, then she smiled slowly, slowly nodded her head. “I will help,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

The Alaska Mainland

FOR TWO DAYS, KIIN
walked back toward the Walrus People’s village. The tumpline of her storage basket had rubbed the skin of her forehead raw, and the pain made her head ache, but as she looked out over the lowlands, she knew that she had walked farther than she had dared hope. She crouched down, removed the tumpline and shoulder straps that held the basket to her back, and set it on the ground. It did not seem so heavy when she started walking in the morning, but by evening her back and shoulders ached as though she had been carrying a basket of rocks.

She pulled Shuku from his carrying sling and set him down. Feeling the firmness of the ground against his feet, he clapped his hands and took two quick steps before falling to hands and knees. He looked up, saw the basket and chortled, then crawled toward it.

“No, Shuku,” Kiin said and swung him up in her arms, laughing as he kicked his feet in protest. She set him down again and then sat on her haunches, draped her arms over her knees, and closed her eyes for a quick moment of rest. She thought of the Traders’ Beach, lifted those thoughts up toward the sky. Perhaps some spirit would see what she wanted and guide her feet. She knew from listening to the Raven and various traders who stopped at their village that she could walk to the Traders’ Beach from the Walrus People’s village without having to cross any part of the sea in ik or ikyak.

It was strange how much more the Walrus People—even women like Lemming Tail—knew about the earth than the First Men did. What had her mother told her when she was a child? That around everything was the circle of the sky; within that circle was the ice, then the sea, and finally the land. A man could take his ikyak and paddle days, even months, and not come to the ice, but if he went far enough, following signs of stars and sun, he would come to the end of the world, the great ice walls that were the barrier between the earth and the Dancing Lights. The First Men’s island was one of many that stretched in a long line from ice to ice, and the islands’ mountains were like the giant spine of some animal sleeping beneath the sea. But Lemming Tail laughed when Kiin said such things.

“Who does not know that your island is only a small stone in a river, like a rock that a man steps on to get to the other side?” Lemming Tail had said. “Who does not know that the earth stretches far beyond what a man can walk in his lifetime and that there are people, so traders say, who live beyond the ice walls?”

Perhaps Lemming Tail was right. The First Men traded only with the Walrus People and the Whale Hunters, but the Walrus People traded with the River People and the Caribou People and with people who, Lemming Tail said, lived in a land of standing wood, a place where giant logs—like those that sometimes came ashore after a storm—grew straight up from the ground like huge ugyuun plants.

But who cared whether First Men or Walrus People were right? Perhaps the spirits, knowing the inside thoughts of each trader, each hunter, allowed every man to see what he wanted to see. Who could say where thoughts ended and land or sea began? But if that was true, then it was good that Kiin believed she could walk back to her own people. What else mattered except living with her own people? What else mattered but having her sons safe, growing up with Samiq as their father?

Kiin’s thoughts slowed, and she allowed herself to remember Samiq, the sound of his voice, of his laughter. She saw him with Takha in his arms, the boy strong and sturdy. She wished Samiq could see Shuku, could know that he was strong and well. She reached for Shuku, but her carrying strap was empty, hanging slack at her side. Her heart trembled within her chest, and she suddenly understood that she had allowed herself to be taken by the spirits into dreams.

“Shuku,” she whispered, and opened her eyes, jumping to her feet. She scanned the tall grass that made everything on the hillside seem the same, one flowing sea of green. He was not there, not anywhere.

“Shuku!” she screamed. She listened, but the wind had grown stronger, and she could hear nothing but its voice and the rustle and sway of the grass sea.

She searched until the sun was only a half circle on the horizon, called until her throat burned, but still she found nothing. The fear that had started as a small catch at the bottom of her throat spread to encircle her chest, and with each breath it seemed as though a giant hand were squeezing against her ribs.

At first, she had run back toward the bay. She knew, even running, that it would take her until long into the night to reach the shore, but thoughts of Shuku drowning filled her mind. What mother did not fear the water spirits that called to young children, luring them to rocky places where waves could knock them down and draw them into the sea? As she ran, she found nothing, no marks from hands and knees. She heard no sounds of a baby crying. But who could hear anything over the wind?

She lifted her voice to call out to the wind spirits, in anger to cry against the loudness of their voices, but the wind continued to blow, and Kiin remembered how often she had told people that she had given Takha to the wind. Had the spirits, angry at her lies, angry with broken promises, taken Shuku instead?

She ran farther toward the bay, through long grass and into the heather of crowberries, then into a tangled growth of willows, but still saw nothing, heard nothing. She dropped to her knees, wrapped her arms up over her head, and began the slow ululations of a mourning song.

But then a voice came to her, her own spirit speaking, though it had been silent during her search: “Kiin, get up. Get up, Kiin. In all your years living with your father, through all the beatings, through the pain, is this what you learned? To quit? To cry and live without hope?”

Kiin raised her head. “I have lost my son!” she said, screaming the words, suddenly angry with a spirit voice that held no sympathy.

“Kiin,” the spirit voice said, stern, like the voice of grandmother teaching granddaughter. “You ran toward what you most feared and did not think. How far can a baby go, one who can barely walk? Could he have come all this way? Go back to the supply basket, back to where you started, and begin there. Circle the basket and then circle it again. Make a wider circle with each pass. The grass is too high for you to see Shuku even if he is only a little way from you.”

“I would hear him cry!”

“What if he is asleep?”

“There are sinkholes. …”

“Yes, and if he fell into one, he is dead. But what if he did not? Will you leave him while you cry? Will you let wolves find him before you do? It is the Moon of Birds Coming Back. The sun is long in the sky. You have light enough to see. Go look for him.”

Kiin wiped her hands over her cheeks and stood up, then walked over the hills to the place where she had left her supply basket. When she reached the basket, she began walking in circles, wider and wider, calling and walking, sending prayers up to the mountains and to the wind, begging for her child to be given back to her. The circles stretched until she was at the crest of the hill. She stopped, looked up to the mountains far beyond and then down the other side of the hill.

The sun was settling into its bed in the sea, and the light was dimming, but it was not the black dark of a winter night. She called, but heard nothing except the echo of her own voice. The wind blew in a sudden gust, cold against her back, and parted the grass, as though the wind spirits were men, walking. She watched, following the wind paths with her eyes, then caught her breath as the grass split over a dark bundle huddled on the ground at the bottom of the hill.

“Shuku! Shuku!” Kiin screamed. She ran, not feeling the sharp edges of the grass as it caught at her feet, cutting the skin between her toes.

She dropped to her knees beside her son. His eyes were closed, his face smeared with dirt. Dried blood marked the line of a grass cut across one cheek. She picked him up, and his eyes opened; his mouth widened into a slow smile. He drew a long shuddering breath. Kiin pressed him to her chest, and he wrapped his arms around her neck, then drew back to pat her cheeks with both hands. She stood up and carried him to the supply basket, where she pulled out sealskins, laid him down, and undressed him, proving to herself that his legs and arms were strong, no bones broken.

Then she tucked him under her suk to nurse as she gutted a fish she had caught the day before and ate it raw for her evening meal.

At the end of the third day, Kiin found a good place on the back of a hill, sheltered from the wind and hidden by long grass. She flattened the grass so that Shuku could play while she sewed sealskins into boots to protect her feet from the sharp-edged grass.

She knew if she went straight west, following the path of the sun, she would come to the Walrus People’s bay. The day before, she had seen the bay glistening like blue ice as she topped each hill, so this morning, fearing women who might come into the hills to gather roots or heather, she had walked straight east, farther into the hills, almost to the base of the mountains that guarded the Walrus People’s village. She had decided to spend the next day sewing and finding roots. There were only two pieces of fish left from the salmon camp bay, and who could say how many more days she would have to walk until she reached another beach? But once she got to a beach, she could find sea urchins and chitons, catch pogies and dig for clams.

“I will not starve,” she said, speaking aloud to any spirits who watched. “I have lived before without a hunter.”

She did not make a fire. The warmth would be good, but why take a chance that the smoke, white against a gray sky, would be seen? She held Shuku tightly against herself, wrapping sealskins and her fur seal pelt around them.

That night wolves awakened her, the sounds of their wolf songs, but their voices were distant, so she was not afraid. She had often heard wolves singing when she lived with the Walrus People. She drifted back into sleep, to be awakened again by skies nearly clear, and sun warm enough to remind her of summer.

She sat and sewed, fitting the boots as she worked and using scraps to make another pair of leggings for Shuku. In the Raven’s lodge, Shuku had gone bare-legged and often naked, as most children did, but here in the wind, he needed something to keep him warm, especially when he was strapped outside his mother’s suk. Yesterday he had wet through his leggings, and at the end of the day his legs were red and chapped. Now Kiin could dry one pair as he wore the other. When they came to a stream she could wash one pair out, and if she softened them with chewing and with oil, they would not rub sores into his legs.